Judge Robert L. Carter, 1917 - 2012

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund mourns the passing of Judge Robert L. Carter, a true giant of the struggle for racial justice and equality. Judge Carter lived an extraordinary life. A graduate of Howard Law School, he was one of the original members of the legal team Thurgood Marshall gathered at the Legal Defense Fund in the early 1940s. He was a principal architect of the legal strategy for the case Brown v. Board of Education[2] and also worked on many other major civil rights cases that changed our country. He won twenty-one of the twenty-two cases he argued in the United States Supreme Court. In 1957 Judge Carter left LDF and became the General Counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Later, he was appointed a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and retired with senior status. Robert L. Carter was a distinguished and exceptional person. His steadfast commitment to justice helped to change the course of history and made our country better. We will miss him.